Page 1731 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

to the hut to get bread, cucumbers, and fresh honey, to
regale them with.
Trying to make his movements as deliberate as possible,
and listening to the bees that buzzed more and more

frequently past him, he walked along the little path to the
hut. In the very entry one bee hummed angrily, caught in
his beard, but he carefully extricated it. Going into the
shady outer room, he took down from the wall his veil,
that hung on a peg, and putting it on, and thrusting his
hands into his pockets, he went into the fenced-in bee-
garden, where there stood in the midst of a closely mown
space in regular rows, fastened with bast on posts, all the
hives he knew so well, the old stocks, each with its own
history, and along the fences the younger swarms hived
that year. In front of the openings of the hives, it made his
eyes giddy to watch the bees and drones whirling round
and round about the same spot, while among them the
working bees flew in and out with spoils or in search of
them, always in the same direction into the wood to the
flowering lime trees and back to the hives.
His ears were filled with the incessant hum in various
notes, now the busy hum of the working bee flying
quickly off, then the blaring of the lazy drone, and the
excited buzz of the bees on guard protecting their

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